Normally in RT, "deleting" an item simply deactivates it and makes it invisible from view. This is done to retain full history and auditability of your tickets. For most RT users this is fine and they have no need of RT::Shredder.

But in some large and heavily used RT instances the database can get clogged up with junk, particularly spam. This can slow down searches and bloat the size of the database. For these users, RT::Shredder allows them to completely clear the database of this unwanted junk.

An additional use of Shredder is to obliterate sensitive information (passwords, credit card numbers, ...) which might have made their way into RT.

Shredder's WebUI integrates into RT's WebUI. You can find it in the Configuration->Tools->Shredder tab. The interface is similar to the CLI and gives you the same functionality. You can find 'Shredder' link at the bottom of tickets search results, so you could wipeout tickets in the way similar to the bulk update.

Should you wipeout something you did not intend to the objects can be restored by using the storage files. These files are a simple set of SQL commands to re-insert your objects into the RT database.

1) Locate the appropriate shredder SQL dump file. In the WebUI, when you use shredder, the path to the dump file is displayed. It also gives the option to download the dump file after each wipeout. Or it can be found in your $ShredderStoragePath.

2) Load the shredder SQL dump into your RT database. The details will be different for each database and RT configuration, consult your database manual and RT config. For example, in MySQL...

Shredder stops with an error if the object has more than $DependenciesLimit dependencies. For example: a ticket has 1000 transactions or a transaction has 1000 attachments. This is protection from bugs in shredder from wiping out your whole database, but sometimes when you have big mail loops you may hit it.

Defaults to 1000. To change this (for example, to 10000) add the following to your RT_SiteConfig.pm:

RT::Shredder is an extension to RT which adds shredder methods to RT objects and classes. The API is not well documented yet, but you can find usage examples in rt-shredder and the lib/t/regression/shredder/*.t test files.

However, here is a small example that do the same action as in CLI example from "SYNOPSIS":

Don't skip make test step while install and send me reports if it's fails. Add your own tests, it's easy enough if you've writen at list one perl script that works with RT. Read more about testing in t/utils.pl.

Since RT-3.7 shredder is a part of the RT distribution. Versions of the RTx::Shredder extension could be downloaded from the CPAN. Those work with older RT versions or you can find repository at https://opensvn.csie.org/rtx_shredder